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India Votes Against OOXML
harsha_c sends in a local Indian perspective on the vote against Microsoft's OOXML ahead of the March 29 deadline. Of 19 companies participating, only 5 voted in favor of OOXML. "It was the ultimate battle for control over global IT standard for documents — between Microsoft-promoted OOXML and Sun and IBM-backed Open Document Format. It was played out between Indian IT giants, namely Infosys, Wipro, TCS supported by Nasscom on one side and the global IT biggies like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat backed by te IITs, IIMs and IISc on the other, on their respective positions on Microsoft's OOXML standard. Microsoft understandably expressed its disspointment. 'While we are disappointed with the decision of the BIS committee, we are encouraged by the support from NASSCOM.'
In fact facilitating technical progress requires that the "no contradicting standards" rule cannot be strictly enforced.
In this situation however there is a serious problem. Because of Microsoft's dominant market position, if OOXML gets ISO/IEC approval, that will probably kill ODF. The problem with this is that this kills investments in ODF. If Microsoft is allowed to get away with this, the net result will be a chilling effect on all investments in non-Microsoft standards.
OOXML sucks technically, but that's not even the real problem. The real problem is Microsoft's waffling on making the standard open. If they had unequivocally placed the standard and all necessary patents in the public domain and committed to keeping it stable, more people might vote for it.
I'm Anti-Microsoft, Pro-Linux, Pro-F/OSS, Pro-Open Standards, all that.
But just because someone is against Microsoft on this issue doesn't mean they are 'honest' or honorable with their intent or motivation.
India is a growing IT powerhouse. When Microsoft provides the basis for participation in IT products and services, it goes without saying that they have influence in your success or failure. It may well be that India's motivation is simply to help Microsoft become irrelevant so that their potential is no longer dependent on Microsoft's will. After all, Microsoft is an American company and as such is subject to influence of the U.S. government. You can see that there's plenty of reason to mistrust Microsoft.
While I applaud the moves in recent times to give us standards within the field of office documents that we can all work with, it doesn't solve the fundamental problems. Chasing after Microsoft, trying to get ISO committees to reject OOXML and trying to get governments to mandate proper standards (a worthy goal, as IT has so very few) is, unfortunately, a saga destined to never end. The reason for this is that Microsoft has the dominant office suite in the world today held in place by the platform they control (Windows), they can mandate any formats they like and they can keep going back to the ISO to get a puppet standard through.
If IBM and others are as serious as people like Rob Weir seem to be then I strongly suggest they stop being chicken shits after the way in which they capitulated OS/2 in the face of Windows, start funding a really viable alternative to Windows and start really getting just what is required. This would be a desktop operating system that would circumvent the OEM channels Microsoft controls by being given away freely so that everybody, including OEMs, can install it free of Microsoft's control, and it will be a desktop good enough in terms of developers' tools and installation so software can get to users. With enough effort then you'd definitely carve out a market large enough to make it viable, and you'd then have an office suite with enough of an installed base. Governments and other organisations would then pick it up as a result.
Winging about OOXML isn't going to get anybody anywhere, sadly. It's only maintaining the status quo.
Either they are dishonest because they don't understand what they're doing while claiming to understand, or they're dishonest because they're knowingly voting against their country's best interest.
Nota bene, the representatives of Microsoft Corporation and partner companies are not necessarily dishonest in their lobbying for "APPROVE" votes, since what they ask for is genuinely in their interest. But the national bodies are supposed to represent the correspondiong national interest!
First you say "I don't think it means a thing for honesty", then you say "it might mean there is less corporate corruption going on". That is a contradiction, dude. If you said it in fewer words, it would be called an "oxymoron".
Then, you say "OOXML really makes no difference", and continue on to say "except for... not having... an overpriced, closed vendor...".
Ditto. You start each sentence one way, then contradict yourself later in the same sentence. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways.
As soon as the revised spec is published by Ecma, the information will be in the public domain. It's crap all right, but it's not "proprietary crap" any longer. And it's certainly no longer an example of missing information in the OOXML spec.
I agree that it is debatable at least whether this kind of information really belongs into a standard. But what would you suggest that should be done with this information?
They're going about it completely the wrong way, why not just make the existing markup describing spacing and line breaking flexible enough to cater to the bugs in these old apps, and then have the conversion process handle it accordingly. No need to enshrine these old bugs in a new format at all.
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